Juneteenth: Rally for Reform

This Friday, June 19, 2020, there will be a rally, organized by members of the Chelmsford community, to celebrate Juneteenth. This holiday, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, honors the last day that African Americans were legally enslaved in our country.

The goal of this rally is to call for educational reform in the Chelmsford Public Schools. Specifically, we will call for CPS to advocate for and support Black and Brown students more actively and to adjust its curriculum to provide greater exposure to the voices, writing, and history of people of color, opening discussion about racism and anti-racism in the classroom.

Specifically, these changes would start with the development of a written plan dedicated to increasing representation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) on school faculty and staff. Alongside adding more BIPOC to faculty and staff, CPS would also hire a diverse, independent group to investigate their current curricula, school assembly speakers, staff hiring practices, and school discipline records to determine more culturally-responsive approaches to all issues regarding race and politics. Faculty and staff would participate in annual racial bias training alongside other leaders and administrators from the town of Chelmsford. From there, the curriculum would be changed to require texts written by Black authors, researchers, and activists in all classroom settings, increasing students’ understanding of the experiences, theories, and activism of Black people. Additionally, faculty and staff would be required to discuss the significance of June 19th (Juneteenth) in their classrooms and the n-word and other racial slurs would be banned in all contexts.

The event this Friday will consist of a march from the Chelmsford Common to McCarthy Middle School, with Black and Brown community members speaking at McCarthy about their experiences and beliefs about the need for educational reform. Masks will be mandatory and social distancing will be strongly encouraged while marching and listening to speakers. The march will begin at 5:45 PM on the Common and the event will end by 8 PM. Anyone with questions can find further logistical details here or contact the event’s organizers via our Facebook event page.